Mistakes
by PragmaticHominid
Summary: The two people Charles Francis Xavier loved most in the world could barely stomach him. He was acutely aware of this fact, though he remained mystified as to how things had become so very bad so quickly.


The two people Charles Francis Xavier loved most in the world could barely stomach him. He was acutely aware of this fact, though he remained mystified as to how things had become so very bad so quickly.

Erik believed he was dangerously naïve. More than that, he thought he was weak. "I don't believe you have it in you to do what's necessary to protect Our People," Erik told him more than once. He said it just like that – "Our People" – and you could hear the capital letters in it. Implicate in the statement was the devaluing of everyone who to Erik wasn't part of "Our People," insignificant little letters for "their people," lower-case and lower-class. He had understood almost from the beginning that their differences were probably irreconcilable, but for a long time it had still seemed worth trying to make things work.

The ugliness with Raven was more of a shock to him, though in retrospect he supposed it ought not to have been that way. She had been quite frank about matters the night before Cuba, but he had dismissed her outburst as little more than pre-mission nerves. He'd been jittery enough himself, after all, and it was difficult to take her at all seriously when she wasn't wearing any clothing.

Charles had not been completely blindsided when she'd decided to go with Erik – Erik had obviously done or said _something _to turn her head – but later he'd been startled and then deeply hurt when she refused to speak with him. "She's still trying to figure out who she is," Erik had told him over the phone, when he's stopped asking to talk to her and had begun to _demand_ that Raven be put on the line. "She can't do that with you hovering over her shoulder, tut-tutting every time she stumbles." Erik had said this in a tone that made his absolute approval of Raven's choice to cut him out of her life impeccably clear.

_What are you doing to my sister?_ Charles had wondered with angry suspicion, because he certainly did not believe Raven capable of doing all this on her own. But he knew damned well that he could not beat Erik with anger – Erik would outclass him there every time – so he had forced himself to remain calm. "I am only concerned -" he began, but Erik spoke over him.

"My God, Charles," he'd said, "A person could smother to death under the weight of your _concern_."

When Raven had finally deigned to see him again – three years later, just before everything had absolutely gone to Hell in ways that he hadn't even imagined might really be possible – he had been badly shaken by what he had seen in her. They had talked a bit – civilly enough – and he'd held the child which apparently no one had thought to tell him about before then, but she had been very cold to him.

That was, she had been cold until Charles had said something offhandedly to the Russian which he supposed in retrospect Raven might have had some reason to take badly. Then her outward demeanor had not changed in the slightest, but her mind had gone poisonous. He had not tried to read Raven's thoughts – she had _pushed _them at him with the force of hammer blows.

"I didn't mean to give offense," he said, unsteady under that onslaught, but Azazel had only shrugged indifferently. Honestly, he hadn't really seemed to have even paid much attention to anything Charles had said up to that point.

_Raven,_ _I don't understand why you have to get so angry_, Charles had projected at her.

_Of course you don't, _Raven had sent back, her mind seething with resentment over mistakes he had not until that moment even known he had made. _That's sort of the point, isn't it. _And then she'd shut down on him completely.

And what then? The world had fallen to pieces, and the survivors had fallen together, and for a time he'd thought their shared grief might be enough to knit the three of them back together again, but it hadn't lasted.

They thought he was a coward, and that was the crux of the thing. They did not believe he had it in him to make hard decisions. And they could think that if they liked – maybe even on some level they were right – but on that beach in Cuba he'd felt slow death slice through another man's bone and brain as certainly as if it had been his own flesh, and he had held on and held out and had held Shaw still, because there had been a choice to make – take the pain and allow Erik to wound them both irreparably in his quest to pay for blood with blood or set Shaw free and see no end to the blood he might spill – and he'd chosen, and so he did not believe himself to be a coward.

But neither Raven or Erik had heard his screams, so how could he tell them afterwards? The Raven he'd known that day would have been horribly distraught, and the Raven he knew now would be dismissive, would have told him that his second-hand pain was appropriated and illegitimate, that it had not really been real at all. And Erik? There was nothing Erik needed less than more guilt.

So he kept it to himself, and prided himself on protecting them from a painful truth, and never did it enter his mind that all this was terribly presumptuous.


End file.
